


Once upon a Midwinter party

by Jessa_yeah



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Christmas, Domestic Fluff, F/F, F/M, Friendship, Gen, Harry is a teacher AU, Holidays, M/M, Multi, Post-War Hogwarts, Romance, Shamelessly self-indulgent, Triad - Freeform, Winter, Yule, and Ginny works at Hogwarts too, generally just people being happy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-24
Updated: 2018-12-24
Packaged: 2019-09-26 10:29:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17140103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jessa_yeah/pseuds/Jessa_yeah
Summary: The Battle of Hogwarts was fought nine and half years ago. Ginny, Harry and Neville decide to host a Midwinter party in their Hogsmeade home.





	Once upon a Midwinter party

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to write a Harry Potter fic in time for the holidays, and took it as a chance to practice writing some dialogue, as I tend to struggle writing that and thus often avoid it. Despite that struggle I still had a lot of fun writing this, hope you enjoy it too! If you do, please leave a comment, that would be greatly appreciated (All I Want For Christmas Is a Fanfic Comment ;) ) Happy holidays, if you celebrate them!

_Dear friends,_

_Ginny, Harry and I will be hosting a Midwinter party on December 21th, from 20 'o clock on, in our Hogsmeade home on Hufflepuff Avenue 14. We'd love it if you would join us. You can of course take any guest along, if you'd like._

_I’ll be looking forward to your reply!_

_Festive greetings,  
Neville Longbottom_

Neville laid the glitter gel pen down on the desk. Even his trained teacher’s hand had gotten tired from writing all those invitations, but he had not wanted to magically copy them, not this time of year. Ginny would probably call him a nostalgic dork if she saw him now. He grinned as he stuffed the cards into a bag and went outside to bring them to the post office. The sky was clouded and drizzly, and it was already getting dark when he got back. Neville did a quick round of his gardens, removing a few weeds and carefully putting a stalk back upright, before he stepped back into the warmth and light of the stone cottage. Harry was on his knees in the living room, breathing into the fireplace, grey ashes in his black hair. Neville bent down to kiss him. Harry grinned up at him, “Where've you been?”

“Went out to deliver the party invitations,” Neville said.

Harry nodded. “Cool. I just got back from school; Gin says she won't be here before seven. Something to do with private coaching. You know she’d be dammed if even one first year can’t stay on a broom before term ends.” He sat back on his heels, cheeks glowing from the fire's warmth. “I really feel like a good party. It's been a few busy months.”

“I wonder how many will come. It has been a long time since we were all together,” Neville mused. 

Save a few who were abroad, almost everyone they had invited promised they would attend.

Hogsmeade looked a dream with its thin dusting of snow and hovering fairy lights. The three of them had come home early from the castle. Teddy and Andromeda had come over for lunch and then went off to Burrow; Ginny and Harry and Neville had lit the fireplaces in the gardens and decorated the brick house and all the rooms in it with holly and silver bells. The small house looked cozy and inviting, plates with treats and drinks everywhere, and Neville was quite proud. 

Luna was the first guest to arrive. Neville had barely washed his hands after icing some last chocolate cakes when she rang the bell, looking glittery and rosy-cheeked and very much, well, very much like Luna. Neville adored her. 

After Luna arrived an elegant looking Ron arm in arm with Pansy Parkinsson – well, he had said they could bring _any_ guest – and after the friendship Ginny and Parvati had developed with the girl, it was perhaps a bit less surprising. Pansy looked rather hot in purple robes, make-up on point, smirk still sharp but not mean. Neville respected the work she had been doing for the Prophet lately anyway, a ruthless delving into corruption within the Ministry, words hard but honest and well-sourced, so on second thought he was glad he had the opportunity to thank her for that. 

Seamus and Dean came in by Floo from Dublin, ever-tiny Dennis Creevy with them in tow. Neville knew the two had offered Dennis a room for the duration of his journalism studies, so it made sense he would come along with them. Neville hugged his former dormmates tight. Seven – or, in Dean’s case, six – years of living together made you a family in its own right. 

The Hufflepuffs apparated in a group, as they often would; formal-looking Head of Law Susan, formal-sounding Ernie, Clerk to the Court, Auror Justin and cheerful Hannah, who had taken over the Leaky Cauldron from old Tom last year, her Ravenclaw husband Terry on her arm. He was glad to welcome them all into his home. 

Padma and Parvati arrived at the same time though from different locations, Padma with a streak of blue paint in her hair that wouldn't come out and Parvati fresh from her Auror duty, spotting a bandaged wrist. Twins will be twins, he supposed. 

After them came Hermione and Cho, the couple who had devoted their lives to books, though Hermione wrote them and Cho sold them. They managed to both smell of fresh paper and ink. Then Astoria Greengrass and Millicent Bullstrode emerged, in Neville’s eyes the most adorable pair of them all. Astoria’s dress and Millicents’ pantsuit were both pine green, and they complimented each other wonderfully. He asked Millicent how her Flutterblooms were doing and promptly got a detailed account how big and purple they were growing to be. Before he knew it, he was telling her about his greenhouses and private gardens. She was so sturdy and easy to talk with and loved gardening as much as he did; Neville found it hard to remember the time he had been afraid of her. Not that she had gotten any less physically intimidating: he had never stopped having to look up at her, and had seen her lifting huge, heavy bags with no difficulty at all on her occasional supply visits to Hogwarts. Did one really need to be that strong?

While Neville was engrossed in their conversation, the last of their guests had arrived. He excused himself to Millicent and had a look around. The house and gardens both were quite full now; chatter and laughter rang in the crisp winter air. Neville heard how Ginny was pestering Seamus for the last muggle football news, and Harry had been drawn into a rather lively game of darts by George, Hannah and Angelina, so he decided to play the part of the host and walk around to see to it that everybody was enjoying themselves. 

Padma, Dean and Padma’s muggle roommate had sprawled onto the carpet in a corner of the living room and were exchanging the latest art techniques and gossip and looking through each others sketch books; they seemed happily immersed, so Neville left them to it.

In another corner Pansy, Millicent, Katie and Parvati were comfortably curled up on the sofa, drinking wine and watching Astoria trying to teach a laughing Terry some kind of traditional dance to the song that was playing. Neville moved closer to select a pastry off a tray.  
Millicent nodded in response to something Parvati just had said. “Astoria's a lot of things I'm not – beautiful, witty, polite. For years, I just could not understand why she would chose someone like me – until she took me to to see Padma’s latest exhibition, the one with the nude portraits. Many of those models were not pretty per se, but the portraits were all really interesting to look at. Perfection tells no stories, Padma said when I asked her about it. It is only an absence. Models who come in and just want to sit prettily are the hardest to draw. And then back home Astoria told me how she learned all her high class manners: years and years when her parents would criticize her every move and appearance and word until she could do nothing but perform all the time. Then I think I finally understood.”  
It sounded like a rather intimate conversation and Neville didn’t want to eavesdrop, so he moved on.

Hermione, predictably, could be found upstairs in the study, looking at the book shelves. Cho, Marietta, Penelope and Susan were also in the room, chatting and drinking mugs of butterbeer. Neville, unlike his partners, found reading to be rather relaxing and had built up quite the collection in the course of the years, especially in botany of course. It clearly wasn’t his botany books Cho had been looking at, though. “Ha, Neville, still enjoying your gay erotica I see?” Cho said, holding up his copy of _In this too deep_. 

“Takes a lover to know a lover,” Neville easily countered, grinning. 

Cho rolled her eyes at him (a habit she, rather adorably, had picked up from Hermione). “It’s a bestseller at my shop, you know. You’re certainly not the only one with a rather, how shall I say it… well, kinky taste, I suppose.” she said. Hermione then apparently couldn’t resist telling them about the 19th century nude photographs of Nicolas Flamel that she had stumbled upon in some archive during research for her newest history book. 

“They weren’t even subtle. They were _explicit_. Obscene, even,” she said, face torn between distaste and awe, and quiet, sober Susan roared with laughter.

Marietta chimed in with, “You gotta do something to keep your sex life from getting boring after living for 600 years, I guess”, which led to further laughter and speculation. 

Neville made a quiet escape.

Outside, luckily no one could see that his cheeks were quite hot. Neville found Oliver Wood and Ron standing beside one of the fireplaces.  
“Doesn't it cause a rift between you two, that your girlfriend was willing to give up Harry to Voldemort?” Oliver was asking Ron. Ron took a sip of his drink and away from the fire; Neville followed his glance. Snow was falling in the flamelit darkness; the bell tower was chiming ten o’clock, softly. The war seemed like a lifetime ago then. Ron looked back at Oliver. “It doesn't, honestly,” he said. “I understand her reasons back then. I also know she won't do anything like that now. She has grown since, learned new things, we all did. That's enough for me.” 

Neville went towards them to raise a toast to that. 

Luna was also out in the garden, blonde hair glowing red and telling an interested Dennis about her latest scientific research in Finland. Neville took his chance to give Dennis a big hug (he hadn’t had the chance before, as Ginny had tackled the poor boy to the ground immediately). He asked Dennis about his studies. The boy was doing well, it seemed, enjoying his internship in a museum in Dublin. 

“You really need to come have a look, Luna,” he said enthusiastically, reminding Neville of his older brother once again, although Colin never got the chance to grow to the age Dennis was now. “They have all these fossils and detailed reconstructions of all kind of creatures, both magical and non-magical. There’s a new Triceratops skeleton they recently dug up, too. Its horns really are massive.” 

“You know me so well, Dennis. I do love impressive horns.” Luna said sincerely, and Neville got mead up his nose. 

Later in the evening, some befriended musicians came to play Scottish tunes, and everyone came outside into the gardens and jumped and danced until they all were flushed and laughing and out of breath. It was a great ending of the evening. 

Once he had waved the last of their guests goodbye, Neville walked one last round around the house to make sure every candle had been put out, then retreated into the warm bedroom. He undressed and slid into the big bed beside Ginny. Harry emerged out of the bathroom and climbed over him to cuddle between the two of them, as he always would. 

“Well, that was a lot of fun,” Ginny said sleepily, braiding her gorgeous hair. 

Neville very much agreed, “I’m glad we came up with the idea.” Harry responded by kissing them both, then seemed to fall promptly asleep beneath the thick blankets, snuggled safe and sound between his two lovers. 

The new day was already a few hours old; another year was coming to a close. In the distance, Hogwarts was silent and peaceful, a layer of time and snow covering its scars. Neville yawned and curled up to sleep, too.


End file.
